‘Promposals’ turn getting a prom date into creative challenge

There is a three-week window in February when the pressure is on and the anticipation level is high at the Bancroft School.

During those three weeks, the teenage girls are usually walking with eyes toward the ceiling for a sign, or their ears tuned to perhaps a roving troubadour for a musical declaration.

For 17-year-old Alexandra Palmieri, she noticed her sign this year as she walked to class with her boyfriend, David Millette. It was in the arms of a snowman, poised on a hill on the Bancroft campus: “Alex … Prom?”

David had climbed the hill the night before to build the snowman. Of course, Ms. Palmieri said yes and will be attending her second prom with Mr. Millette at the Beechwood Hotel on April 13.

Getting asked to the prom is no longer a simple question posed as students meet at their lockers between classes or over a latte at Starbucks. Today, it is often an ornate calculated event with as much thought and planned romanticism as a marriage proposal. Teenage boys aren’t just asking for a date; they plan “promposals.”

The three-week window of anticipation starts when the prom invitations go out to students and ends with the deadline to purchase tickets.

“This happens pretty regularly,” said Ms. Palmieri, who started to notice promposals happening to upperclassmen when she was an eighth-grade student, and it is a moment that is often shared among students — and sometimes with the help of school administrators who get caught up in machinations of young romance.

Last year, Ms. Palmieri was in Latin class and her teacher said they were going to celebrate a Latin holiday that Ms. Palmieri had never heard of, and in walked Mr. Millette with an ice cream cake asking her to the prom.

While some are done privately, most promposals are very public.

Neha Indoliya, 17, of Shrewsbury, was asked to the prom on Valentine’s Day. She was met outside of her classroom by her boyfriend, Kevin Duong, who was holding a teddy bear, flowers and chocolates. The teddy bear had a pouch that said “I love you” and inside the pouch was a note that read “Prom: Yes or Yes?”

“He didn’t even give me a choice!” Ms. Indoliya said.

Last year, Ms. Indoliya almost missed her promposal. Her date had left a note on her locker that read “Keep your head up. You never know what you’ll find.” Her promposal was a sign on the ceiling.

“You just want people to know you got asked; I wanted people to know I got asked!” Ms. Palmieri said.

The concept of creatively asking for a prom date has been around for several years, but was coined “promposal” in recent years, and coincided with the advent of social media websites, said Dennis Consorte, marketing manager for the White Plains, N.Y.-based FineTuxedos.com.

“Everyone has a cellphone and video camera, so it’s an easy thing to do to pop out the phone and capture the moment,” Mr. Consorte said. “With social media, with YouTube and everyone having a Twitter account or Facebook page, promposals are a way of saying ‘Let’s do something over-the-top and put it out there.’ ”

“At the end of the day, the girls want a good story to tell their friends,” Mr. Consorte said.

Eni Nano, 17, of Worcester, received her first promposal this year. Her date, Andrew Lukas, strung a banner across a doorway, asking in red lettering: “Eni: Prom?” and it was signed “A.” The banner, however, has a special meaning for the couple. Both Ms. Nano and Mr. Lukas are fans of the ABC Family Show “Pretty Little Liars,” about a group of teenage girls who are stalked by someone who leaves threatening notes signed “A.”

“I knew he was going to ask me, I was just wondering when,” Ms. Nano said. She got her answer when he asked her to help him hang something down the hall.

For Keely Sullivan, now a freshman at Syracuse University, her senior year promposal was a bit more intimate. Ms. Sullivan had planned to go to the prom with her boyfriend who was not a student at Bancroft. Therefore, she said, the onus was on her to ask him.

“But I really wanted to be asked to prom,” Ms. Sullivan said, in between classes at Syracuse. “Every girl wonders what cute thing a boy will dream up.”

So she decided she would ask her date to ask her to go to the prom.

One day in March, they packed a picnic and went to Boston Common. When they got there, he took out two sandwiches and handed her one wrapped in foil.

“He handed me this sandwich, I opened it, and it looked like there was nothing in it,” Ms. Sullivan said. She pulled the bread apart to find on one side, a card the color of jelly and the other side a card the color of peanut butter, asking “Prom … me?”

“I loved the fact that it was so original, and so simple,” Ms. Sullivan said. “The promposal was cute and it matched our personalities. It was so goofy and matched us so well that I knew I had picked the right person to be my boyfriend at the time, that I had picked the right person to dance with me and that I had picked the right person to sit at the table and say ‘You look beautiful tonight.’ ”

Some high school students have taken it a step further, putting themselves out on a limb and asking a celebrity to the prom, such as one Los Angeles high school student who created a video asking Sports Illustrated cover model Kate Upton to his prom. She politely declined because of her busy work schedule.

Contact Donna Boynton at dboynton@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @DonnaBoyntonTG